


Let it out and let it in

by keysmash



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Community: 14valentines, F/M, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-14
Updated: 2010-02-14
Packaged: 2017-10-07 06:33:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/62388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keysmash/pseuds/keysmash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes the habits were so deeply ingrained she didn't even realize she was still following them until after the fact, until the stuff her parents taught her was part of her life with John whether she liked it or not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let it out and let it in

**Author's Note:**

> Title from The Beatles. Written for 14valentines.

Mary had John help her with the nursery because she didn't trust herself to do it alone. Part of that was just being careful — the paint fumes, which had always made her lightheaded, now also nauseated her, which couldn't be a good sign — but part of it was that she still remembered how to protect a home, and she knew that, if she were decorating by herself, she'd slip up, and fall right into her old ways.

She had a hard enough time keeping things toned down as it was. Sometimes the habits were so deeply ingrained she didn't even realize she was still following them until after the fact, until the stuff her parents taught her was part of her life with John whether she liked it or not. Her kitchen was full of salt, bags and bags of it, and the garage held plenty of road salt, all year long, as well. She'd put a set of sterling silver silver flatware on their wedding registry and didn't recognize what she'd done until one of John's uncles bought it for them, and she brought home a set of iron fireplace tools before they even had a fireplace. She planted blessed thistle and lavender and fennel along with the rosemary and basil she grew in flowerpots in the kitchen, and probably it hadn't been a coincidence that the neighborhood they moved into was full of ash trees. Neither of them went to church, but she had holy books in several languages, all in the oldest translations she could find, on the bookshelf. She had four knives in the kitchen, and she kept them all sharp and shining; she didn't let John touch them.

She hadn't carved devil's traps into the floorboards throughout the house, or painted them onto the ceilings, the way she wanted to, but she could talk herself out of that. She was out of practice but she thought she could still handle herself if she ever found a fight again, and the same held true for John. He may have only learned to fight as an adult, instead of being raised up in it, but he'd made it through a war just the same. He was careful with the handful of weapons he kept in the house, keeping the rifle and sidearm locked up and the knife in a drawer, just like she did. She couldn't keep herself from feeling safer with them in the house. Some nights, when she second-guessed herself, she could open John's gun cabinet and take them out. They were a reassuring, familiar weight in her hands even though she hoped to never need them, even though part of her hated them.

Mostly, she'd made her peace with the fact that she wasn't as safe as she could be, but that went out the window whenever she stood alone in the nursery. John put the crib together and she could only see places where the wood was thick enough to stand being carved into. He spread a rug on the floor, one that would cover most of the room but wouldn't stretch underneath the crib, and she wanted to flip it over and draw a trap on its bottom. He painted the windowsill and she wanted to pour salt into the can, so it would always be between her baby and the rest of the world. She and John did the rest of the house together, making all the changes the baby book said they should, but that extra bedroom was the hardest part. She couldn't see how it would keep their baby anywhere near as safe as her body was now.

She'd turned in her notice at work as soon as it started hurting to be on her feet at the hospital all day, and so now, not only was money tighter than ever, she was bored. Mary had never planned on working after she had kids — she wasn't just not going to hunt, she was going to _be there_ for her children — but she also hadn't counted on how dull the final months of waiting would be. it only took a week for sleeping in to not be an exciting proposition any more, and she found herself eying the uniforms hanging in their closet with something like loss. She couldn't even fit into them any more, but eventually she gave them to Angie, the girl they hired to replace her, just to get them out of her day to day life.

It was doctor's appointments, these days, and knitting a layette, and learning fast and easy recipes she could make with a baby in one arm. She'd made this choice a long time ago, after one night too many of coming home to an empty house and making her own dinner and going to sleep by herself and still being alone when she woke up for school the next morning, but it was harder than she'd thought. Mary spent a lot of time going through her old journals, reminding herself exactly why she was doing this, and then spent more time making new entries.

She didn't have anyone she could talk to, really. For all the things her mom had done wrong, she'd also done the basic tasks of motherhood, of the early stuff, just fine. Mary knew the basics of what to expect from childbirth, both as a biological process and as a chain of events that would take place in the hospital, but she didn't know other things. Did she really need all the fiddly gadgets the books seemed to think she did? What was the best of doing things? What had her mom done with her? She got lunch one weekend with some of the girls who'd worked in the pediatric ward, and she made a point of being friendly with the mothers she saw in the neighborhood, but no one swooped in and talked her through the entire thing, the way she wanted. Mary was used to acting on instinct, but she also wanted training, first, and the Lamaze class she and John went to once a week didn't seem anywhere near enough.

A spate of garage sales moved through the neighborhood as the year turned cold, and on the weekends when John picked up an extra shift, Mary shrugged into her coat and went looking for stuff. They had everything they needed, really, but she had a hard time being alone in the house as it creaked and settled into the new weather. She kept thinking of things she could do, things she could make safer, and every time, she wound up leaving to keep from doing them. If she went by at the end of the day, when people were packing up their unsold things, sometimes they would give her baby clothes. She didn't have anyone to give her hand-me-downs, and she always paid a little for the clothes, and then took them home, washed them, and folded them into tiny drawers.

She ran across things she did want, from time to time, and when she saw the angel figurine, priced at twenty-five cents, Mary bought it without even turning it around to see if the back or the bottom was cracked. She knew better than to believe in angels, but the nursery was still so empty, and something about it attracted her. She made it home to the kitchen, wetting down a towel to wipe it off, before she looked underneath and saw Algiz carved into the plaster, looking like a bird's foot just the way she thought it always had. Mary swallowed hard at having brought this into her home _again_, and she almost carried it to the garage, to chunk into the trash can.

John found her standing there with it, though, staring down at it, and she didn't know how to explain to him why she didn't want it now. She'd obviously liked it enough to buy it, and he wouldn't understand why she was jumpy about a rune scratched into the bottom of it. She still liked the way it looked, liked the way it filled up the tiny room and gave it something of a personality, and so John hung up a shelf and they put it up together. Algiz meant protection, after all, and maybe Mary could let it slide, just this one time. She could be wrong about the angels, she guessed — just because she'd never heard of anyone actually running across an angel didn't necessarily mean they didn't exist — and having their protection could only help.


End file.
